The academic community often recognizes the importance of an emotional intelligence-based education, and local wellness coordinator for the Genesis Tree of Life Yoga and Wellness Center, Joy Jangdhari, has been working to bring this very training to the masses for about a decade.

Jangdhari is the author of a short personal wellness manual, “Living Life as a Joyful Being,” published in January 2011, which she says serves as a simple tool for those who are ready to take a look within themselves and begin the journey of personal self-healing.

“Many of us have spent most of our lives avoiding that look within,” reads the first chapter of Jangdhari's 15-chapter book. “We deny, repress and suppress our feelings and pain of the past.”

Jangdhari's own journey into self-healing begins with the military, when her high school sweetheart joined the U.S. Army, where he became a staff sergeant and an expert sniper.

“He was a green beret, so he was basically gone nine months out of the year. And then he got post-traumatic stress,” Jangdhari said. “One day we had our pet thumper, and he was a rabbit, and he [killed] our pet thumper and he put it on the plate for the kids to eat. So this guy who was incredible, who was wonderful, went through this shift.”

At that point, Jangdhari began to seek help because she realized that her family was falling apart. So she began searching through the different modalities of teaching, with her focus being on the natural schools.

Everywhere she went, doctors were telling her, “You have to be on medication, and the kids. And I thought, no. So I went to all the natural schools,” said Jangdhari, such as the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Mass., where she earned her instructor's certificate.

After years of training, self-reflection and observations, Jangdhari realized that many people today just don't know how to cope with stress, which she defined as, “the tension between what we want to happen and what is actually happening.

“They want to beep the horn [when driving], they want to strangle someone and they don't know why,” said Jangdhari. “They don't understand why their buttons are being pushed [or] how to be an impartial spectator in their own lives.”

“Anyone who's served in the military will find this book to be an excellent resource when dealing with the unique challenges of a military family, such the pain of multiple deployments,” Carol said.

In accordance with her belief that, “everybody needs to know what's going on with themselves,” and that wellness programs like hers shouldn't just be for the wealthy, Jangdhari and the rest of the staff at the Genesis Center, located at 10206 Metropolitan Ave., plan to lead three mid-week healing workshops on November 6, 13 and 20.

The sessions, which she will be hosting each of these dates, includes a healing workshop for veterans and their families, a workshop for cancer patients and their families and a third workshop entitled, “Shedding the Layers of Your Emotional Story.”

Each will be open to the public and run on a donation-only basis.

The sessions will utilize training regimens that Jangdhari established for her corporate wellness program, Joy Events, and her military outreach non-profit, Operation Dare to Care.

“I'm willing to do this for free for you,” said Jangdhari. “I just want to get it out there.”